Police and fire news in the San Fernando Valley – A Los Angeles News Group blog at blogs.dailynews.com/crime

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Monthly Archives: June 2008

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Three people broke into a home and beat up someone on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. in the 4700 block of Sepulveda Boulevard. The victim stated that on June, 26, 2008 at about 4 p.m. he opened the door and was jumped by three suspects. The suspects hit, choked, and struck the victim on the face with a stick. The suspects spent about 20 minutes inside his residence and removed numerous electronic items and fled in an unknown direction.

Someone was shot in the elbow Friday at 1:05 a.m. in the 18800 block of Strathern Street. The victims were standing in front of their residence when the suspects pulled up in a vehicle. The suspects asked if they were from a gang. The victims told them that they were not in a gang at which time, the driver suspect reached over the passenger and fired one round, striking one of the victims in the elbow. The suspects then sped off.

Cities and counties are battling manhole-cover thefts, a crime spree that police tie to the weak economy. Hundreds of 200-pound covers have disappeared in three months in California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Georgia as scrap metal prices pop up.

An armed robbery occurred at 9:12 a.m. in the 13900 block of Ventura Boulevard. The victim was standing outside of his store when the suspect pistol-whipped him. The suspect took money from the victim and then entered the store. When the suspect was unable to find any more money, he ran away. The victim was taken to Kaiser Hospital for stitches.

A home-invasion robbery occurred at 12:04 a.m. in the 1200 block of Moorpark Street. The suspects approached the apartment where the victims were at with a handgun, entered and demanded money. The Suspects took off north through the apartment complex with the victim’s money.

An ideologically split Supreme Court struck down DC’s handgun ban saying it went too far. The ruling strengthens individual gun owner rights and is a major victory for gun advocates. In addition to striking down the country’s toughest gun ban, the court also held unconstitutional the requirement that shotguns and rifles be kept disassembled or unloaded or outfitted with a trigger lock

This is from the Washington Post:

The Supreme Court, splitting along ideological lines, today declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns for self-defense, striking down the District of Columbia’s ban on handgun ownership as unconstitutional.

The 5 to 4 decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia represented a monumental change in federal jurisprudence and went beyond what the Bush administration had counseled. It said that the government may impose some restrictions on gun ownership, but that the District’s strictest-in-the-nation ban went too far under any interpretation.

Scalia wrote that the Constitution leaves the District a number of options for combating the problem of handgun violence, “including some measures regulating handguns.”

“But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,” he continued. “These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.”

The court also held unconstitutional the requirement that shotguns and rifles be kept disassembled or unloaded or outfitted with a trigger lock. The court called it a “prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.”

If you haven’t checked out our new Valley Crime Map, you should. It’s a list of 92 significant crimes – from homicides, to assaults to shootings, to robberies and burglaries – in the Valley since May. I’ve been compiling the data and uploading it into a new online database that maps the crimes out by street and allows you, the viewer to, search by neighborhood and get up-to-date information about crime near you.

Thanks to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Valley Bureau, the information comes to me about daily. I’d like to know what you think about the map and how we can make it more useful. E-mail me with your thoughts.

A judge approved a preliminary injunction against the San Fers gang this morning, a move that now restricts the movement of hundreds of gang members over a 9.5-mile stretch of the Northeast Valley and gives police broader arrest authority.

In a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court that lasted just a few minutes, Judge David P. Yaffe granted the request from the City Attorney’s Office and District Attorney’s Office. Nobody voiced opposition in court.

Previously, community members have complained the injunction, one of the city’s largest, spreads too far, folding in middle class neighborhoods in Sylmar and San Fernando untouched by daily violence.

But after several town hall meetings, both the Sylmar and Mission Hills neighborhood councils backed the injunction even as some argue police and prosecutors pushed it through without consulting the community.

There seems to be a bit of a disagreement among the region’s top cops about the root causes of gang violence; racial tensions versus gang loyalty.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca believes serious inter-racial tension fuels the city’s gang problem and he made a strong case for it an LA Times opinion piece that ran a few weeks ago. In doing so, he directly took on LAPD Chief William Bratton, who has repeatedly pointed out that violence emanates from gang affiliation, not skin pigmentation. To clarify his point, head of LAPD’s detective bureau and 30-year veteran Charlie Beck laid out his argument in the LATimes Opinon section today.

It is true, of course, that many of L.A.’s gangs are organized along racial lines. Gangs almost always have been. You name the race or ethnic group and, during some time in history, some of their number have resorted to forming gangs to leverage their power in society. The Italians and the Irish come to mind in the 20th century. But being made up along racial lines doesn’t mean that every crime is racially motivated. Mostly, the gang violence we see on the streets of Los Angeles is committed for other reasons — over turf control, over traditional gang rivalries, over drug deals, over who disrespected whom, and over women. These are not racially motivated killings.

The danger of overstating racial conflict, thereby turning a discussion into a self-fulfilling prophesy, is very real. As our city grows and as demographics shift, cross-racial contacts increase, along with opportunities for conflict.
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Of course, you have to keep in my mind that the two men see gangs from very different places. Beck works the streets where gang members’ first loyalty is to their neighborhood or close friends. With freedom, gang members can pick and chose who and when to fight.
Baca oversees the county’s overcrowded jail system, where loyalty is not so clear cut and alliances are key to survival. There, race constantly bubbles to the surface. Inmates are often separated not only along gang lines but race, because in a place that nobody can call home, it is easier to define loyalty by skin color.

DATE / TIME: 6/23/08, 2029 hrs LOCATION: Devonshire St. Sepulveda Blvd.
TYPE OF WEAPON: Handgun SUSPECT(S) IN CUSTODY: No
# OF VICTIM(S): 1 # OF SUSPECT(S): 1
INJURIES: No TYPE OF INJURIES: None
GANG RELATED: No NOTIFICATIONS: W/C
COMMENTS: The suspect entered the market armed with a handgun. The suspect threatened the cashier with a handgun. The cashier in fear for her safety, gave the suspect the money in the cash register. The suspect then fled the location.

ROBBERY

DATE / TIME: 6/23/08, 2226 hrs LOCATION: San Fernando Mission Blvd/Woodley Ave.
TYPE OF WEAPON: Handgun SUSPECT(S) IN CUSTODY: No
# OF VICTIM(S): 1 # OF SUSPECT(S): 1
INJURIES: No TYPES OF INJURIES: None
GANG RELATED: No NOTIFICATIONS: W/C
COMMENTS: The suspect entered the market armed with a handgun. The suspect located the store manager and at gun point directed the manager to the store office. The suspect then ordered the manager to open the store safe, the manager then grabbed for the suspects handgun and a struggle ensued. As a result of the struggle, the handgun was fired 2 times with no injury to anyone. The suspect took the money and fled the location in an unknown direction.